Life Of Riley
by gostlcards
Summary: Spoilers for "Strange Things Happen At The One Two Point". Just a drabble, a look into Riley's life leading up to this point. Please R&R! :


Disclaimer: Not mine, but I loves it! :)

A/N: My first terminator fic, and pretty drabbleish. I wanted to get it up before the new episode tonight (Dec 1) and it was inspired by last weeks episode because I believe Riley to now be from the past with Jesse. So here are some of what I think her rambling thoughts might consist of. Hope you guys like....

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She's always wondered what french fries tasted like.

Having been born almost 3 years after Judgement Day, french fries are extinct like many other things in the world. She had never even really heard of them until she 7 or 8, in one of the work camps she and her mother had landed in. Her mother was sick, getting worse by the day, and they came across a young Australian woman who had arrived in America months before the bombs had fallen. She had been barely 15 then, but now, almost 25, she was hardened to the world. Her own parents had died on Judgement Day, flippant and bitter, but somehow, became best friends with Riley's mother. When she died months later and the camp was soon liberated, Jesse somehow became the next best thing for her.

Over the next 8 years, she stays close, but not too close. In their world, Jesse looks out for her, but it's impossible to be near her at all times. She's never even spent real time with Derek, which she will be thankful for when she arrives in the past. How bad would that have been?

She remembers the day Jesse comes to her, serious and determined. Some of those working under John Connor have come to a serious conclusion, one they must adjust immediately; the Metal is becoming too influential in John Connor's decision making process, anyone could see that, and it was beginning to cost too many human lives. Jesse has been approached by these men and is informed of the existence of a machine to send them back in time before Judgement Day. They are going to go back and take care of the machine, no matter what. Riley is tapped as the diversion, the distraction, and she's terrified.

That is, until she sees him for the first time in what feels like years. It's really only days, and he's sitting alone on the grass under a tree in front of the school, staring at nothing. She keeps watching; she remembers what Jesse's told her, but she doesn't know exactly how to confront him, how to be friendly, how to gain his trust. How to flirt, be coy. Those types of approaches were rarely ever useful to someone of her age, although older woman were known to use their wiles to obtain extra food, clothing or shelter when in the most dire of circumstances. The John Connor of her world is in his mid to late 30's, so she's heard, and she's merely 16. He has never blinked at her, let alone spoken a word, but yet she sees in him a confidence and strength, and understands how people follow him unwaveringly.

When she speaks to him a few days later, she realizes the older John Connor and this one are polar opposites. This John Connor, this young man, is eager for change, for normalcy, and she realizes this will be what she should use to her advantage. She begins to think of him as John Baum instead of John Connor, begins to see him as just a cute boy and begins to feel something she never expected to. Concern. Deep friendship. A dangerous feeling akin to love, something that could surely lead to it.

Mexico shakes her up bad though. She can't believe herself, running, screaming, acting like a lunatic and she tells herself she's just playing the part but what she knows its this past, this life she's falling into, it's making her soft. The conclusion brings her crashing back down to earth. At her foster parents house, she just goes to her room and cries into her pillows. She can hear them teasing and laughing on the main floor below and she realizes that their carefree attitudes are what made her begin to resent them in the first place.

John comes by, gives her the brush off. She panic's and calls Aunt Jesse, who meets her at a store near the pier. In the fitting room, she brushes back her hair and talks softly, but Riley, now becoming an adult in her own right and no longer a child, has come to see the blatant two-face persona that is her "Aunt". She loves Derek, she does, yet she doesn't trust him because she came of age in a world where she could trust no one, not even the ones she loves and Riley knows that includes her. She knows that, if she fails her or comprises the mission in any way (which would really be one and the same), Jesse would shoot her where she stood. It chills her blood, turns her stomach but surprisingly, doesn't come as too much as a shock. She realizes she's always known this.

She shows up on John's front porch, set and determined and pushes away the guilt as he smiles at her, believing she is merely a 16 year old girl with a really big crush, whose only goal right now is to have a boyfriend and listen to music and all other things not involving guns, and metal, and death. It's normalcy, an innocence John craves in his own life, but can never have so he gets it from her. She is deceiving him, but as far as he knows, she's exactly everything he wants to be in life. So why ruin the charade for him? In a way, it's an even trade.

He takes her to a McDonald's down the street and they pull in for a quick bite. He buys her food; she orders the Big Mac meal, large with a Coke and he laughs; her appetite has not been lost on him and he thinks it's refreshing to finally find a girl who's not afraid to eat in front of him, and he tells her so. She smiles and thinks how much she'd love to tell him how her normal meals months before consisted of scraps, barely edible vegetation and dirty water. He thinks she's smiling at his joke, and she touches his forearm lightly, stroking his ego, insuring the charade.

They sit and he watches her eat slowly, savoring every bite, every french fry individually as he inhales his food like any other 17 year old male would.

"God, these are the best things ever." She shakes her head, licking salt from her fingers.

"You say that about every thing you eat." He says laughing. She winks at him.

"I just appreciate really good food. You never know what might be your last meal." She laughs though to cover it up, saying it with a sly smile that lets him believe she's being funny and he appreciates it. She's not all doom and gloom, she's not all prophetic and she likes him for him, not because he's 'The John Connor'.

She knows it, and she knows she's lying, but as guilt begins to rise in her gut, all she can hear in her mind are the babies that cry in the middle of the night when they're hiding and sacrifices must be made, then and there; the HK's combing the grounds, shooting people where they stand; screaming, dirty people who would beat another to literal death just for a spare morsel. Her own mother's dirty, thin face, coughing blood. Her Aunt Jesse's face, set, determined. Real.

And she doesn't care about the lie, anymore.


End file.
